A Bird Blog with Kate St. John

Peregrine falcons are famous for their sky diving speed. How to measure it? Dive with them.

In this video a British falconer taught his female peregrine, Lady, to stoop at a yellow lure from a hot air balloon. Then he took her up with two skydivers who strapped together and jumped, holding the lure.

Lady followed in a stoop and caught up to them within seconds. To do so she had to accelerate to over 180 mph. Perhaps she thought they were going a little slowly. The divers saw her play in the air nearby as they fell.

In the end Lady got her prize and proved that peregrines dive faster than humans.